- The Texanist: Texas Gets More Tornadoes Than Any Other State, but Don’t Freak Out
- U.S. Supreme Court says Texans can sue state for flood damage
- This is how many hurricanes NC State researchers predict this year
- NC State researchers predict above-average hurricane season
- Supreme Court rules in favor of property owners suing Texas over flood damage
Two weeks after Florence, evacuees in Cary can't return to Pender County home
Nearly two weeks after Hurricane Florence hit, the only way to get in and out of a Pender County resident’s home is by kayak.
Meredith Nance said her flooded home is “like a horror movie.”
She and her 4-year-old and 7-year-old sons evacuated to her mother’s home in Cary.
Other family members stayed behind. When the storm hit, they sent Nance pictures of her flooded house and of their kayaking to safety.
“All your baby pictures and your kids’ things just sitting there being flooded,” Nance said.
Most everything she owns is ruined, she said. She does not have flood insurance.
“I should have been more prepared,” she said. “I should’ve gotten everything on the tables upstairs, even.”
Nance and her family have been sleeping on a sofa at her mother’s home as they wait for the flooding at their own home to recede.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has offered the family help, and community members have dropped off clothes. Nance’s older son has enrolled at Cary Elementary School. The school gave him supplies and a backpack.
Nance hasn’t told her sons about what happened; she doesn’t know how to tell them, she said.
“It’s just a lot,” she said. “I’m trying to be strong, but it’s them that makes it heartbreaking, when they just want to go home and they ask every day when they can go home, and I don’t have an answer for them. And as a mom, you want to be able to give them an answer.”
Nance knows, though, that they can’t go home.